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After Atelier 17 became re-established in Paris in 1950, younger artists made their way to work there. Among them was Belgian artist, Pierre Alechinsky (born 1927) who began living and working in Paris in 1951. That same year Alechinsky organized the final CoBraA exhibition in Liegée Belgium.

The personal quality of hand-writing greatly appealed to CoBrA artists. ‘The important thing,’ Alechinsky wrote, ‘is to discover an inner script … with which we can explore ourselves organically.’ Alechinsky said that he painted as if he was a spinning-top, unable to control his own movements. This is evident in The Night (Le Nuit) in which twists and twirls of white on a black ground evoke luminous night forms. *Tate Gallery label, July 2008

Alechinsky’s approach would seem to grow out of Hayter’s interest in automatic drawing or engraving as a kind of automatism. We have on offer a color trial proof, Le Nuit which was printed from a plate made at Atelier 17 in Paris in 1952 and annotated, monotype. It was later published in 1968 as part of Alechinsky’s folio, Hayterophilies. Our impression expresses a tenderness with soft-toned blue and yellow set against the activity and energy of the gestures

Hayter’s fascination with the relief character of the printed burin line led him and other members of Atelier 17 to explore printing techniques that emphasized the sculptural nature of the engraved plate. As early as 1931, experiments were made at Atelier 17 with “plaster prints,” or actual plaster casts of engraved copper plates. Hayter learned about this technique of making a print in plaster of Paris from a Treatise on Etching by Maxine Francçois Antoine Lalanne
This technique had the advantage of demonstrating the relief of the lines more clearly than the lines of an inked print on paper. The print (on paper) reveals more of the subtleties of engraving such as fine lines and tonal relationships, but the plaster cast emphasized the depth of the engraved lines. * Thanks to Joanne Moser, Atelier 17 A 50th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition, Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison 1977

We are proud to offer Hayter’s Myth of Creation 1940 (BM134), along with a state-proof impression from the same plate. Plaster prints are hybrid works that both print making and sculpture. Other examples can be found in major museum collections and it is a rare opportunity when a superb example like Myth of Creation comes becomes available for sale.

We are proud to offer some early engravings by Louise Bourgeois (French-American, 1911-2010).

In 1946 Bourgeois finally found her way to Atelier 17, the intaglio workshop that Stanley William Hayter had moved from Paris to New York in 1940. The expertise of Hayter and the array of international artists who worked there made the Atelier a center of printmaking activity in the city. When asked about the Atelier Bourgeois noted the social setting, she stated, “There were a lot of interesting people there…” The Chilean artist Nemecio Antunez, who spoke French became a good friend, and she developed a close relationship with Joan Miró when he was at the workshop in 1947. Bourgeois undertook there her most important print project of the forties: the book/portfolio He Disappeared into Complete Silence. *Thanks to Deborah Wye, from The Prints of Louise Bourgeois.

From this period with 1949 we have Hanging Weeds Wye #56. Ours is a strong, elegant proof after the third state. We also have a proof impression of Plate 3 from the folio, He Disappeared into Complete Silence 1947. These rare works came to us from Hayter’s own print collection, as did Nemecio Antunez’s City Dwellers 1950. Mr Antunez (Chilean, 1918–1993) later became a major figure in Chilean art.

We are pleased to present a new prints project by the distinguished Contemporary painter, John Walker (born 1939, Birmingham, England) . They are titled FenwayI, II, III, IV and the group was produced while Walker was a visiting artist at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Born in Birmingham, England, John Walker was awarded the Harkness and Guggenheim Fellowships. He was awarded artist-in-residence at Oxford University and Monash University, Australia. In 1972 he represented England at the Venice Biennale. He has taught at the Royal College of London, Yale University, and Boston University, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, MOMA, MFA Boston, Cleveland Museum, Tate Gallery, British Museum

Fenway II is a sugar lift aquatint with hand coloring. The rough-hewn patterns and soft-edged colors are draw upon memory and observation of the New England landscape and seascape. These robust works are the latest in Walker’s long and distinguished career.

We are delighted to share a pair of proof impressions of Serie I from plates made by Joan Miró at Atelier 17 in New York in 1947. Miró had come to the United States for work on a commission for the Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio. He had been working at Atelier 17 on and off since the early 1939s and visited Stanley William Hayter in New York in June, 1947.

“One of the artists who exploited the effects of open bite etching most successfully was Joan Miró. Previously Miró had limited his prints to fairly conventional etchings and drypoints”. However, in New York in 1947, “the variety and unorthodoxy of the devices Miró employed…testify not only to the imaginative powers of an individual artist, but also to the uninhibited attitude toward experimentation that prevailed at Atelier 17 during the 1940s. (Joanne Moser’s, Atelier 17 A 50th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition, Elvehjem Art Center, university of Wisconsin, Madison 1977)

The plate for Mirós Serie I (Dupin 75-82) was printed and published by Maeght in Paris in 1952. However our impressions were pulled when Miró made the plate in New York. They are a superb demonstration of Miró exploring the possibilities of an etched plate: one impression is printed in relief, with the ink rolled onto the surface where with the other impression he has inked and wiped the surface of the plate clean to push the figures forward, haloed by the deep-etched outline. They are a handsome pair and both are annotated, “pour Hayter New York 17/6/1947”. The relief impression is also annotated on back, “Femme Enfants Etoilé,” while the intaglio impression is annotated, “Jeux d’Enfant”.

We are fortunate that this pair remained together in Hayter’s own collection and we could not be more pleased to offer them 70 years on.

Victoria Burge makes prints and drawings that use systems of mapping to generate abstracted cartographies of imagined terrains. We are very pleased to present her newest large-scaled, six-color lithograph with lots of hand work, Vega, 2017. We will show this extraordinary new work at the 2017 IFPDA Print Fair. Please ask to see it along with an earlier lithograph of the night sky and 2 new and related drawings.

Victoria Burge’s prints are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the British Museum, the Hunterian Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has been awarded Fellowships and grants in support of her work from the Independence Foundation, the Krasner-Pollock Foundation and will travel to Ireland in 2018 for a residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation.